The Russia Meteor Incident

The recent news is that on Friday morning (Feb.15), the Chelyabinsk region of Russia was shocked by a giant fireball shooting across the sky. 

The explosion, caused by a small meteoroid entering the atmosphere, injured hundreds as it destroyed the windows which sent glass flying all over.

In a way the videos of the glass and fireball gave the scientists the exact location and size and shape of the meteorite and it also gave the scientists help to figure out what happened

Diamonds on Other Planets

Researchers have now found out that the atmosphere of the planets Saturn, Neptune, Jupiter, and Uranus have perfect atmosphere, temperature, and pressure to have carbon in the form of an diamond.

The proof was presented three days ago at the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sources conference in Denver. It has been found that Neptune and Uranus have more gems than Jupiter and Saturn.

These diamonds have been found to be a little more dense than the earth diamonds. It has been found out that one of the reasons by which diamonds were created is the lightning in the planets containing diamonds.

Johannes Kepler

Today I am going to write about the astronomer Johannes Kepler's history, and in my next three blog posts, I shall share information about his three laws.

Kepler was born on December 27th, 1571, in Weil der Stadt in Swabia. His grandfather, Sebald Kepler, was a  craftsman who served as mayor of the city. His other grandfather Melchior Guldenmann, ran an inn and was mayor of the nearby village of Eltingen.

His father, Heinrich Kepler, was a soldier who he did not like, and he also did not like his mother. Throughout his whole life Kepler had many illnesses.

Kepler lived with his grandparents until his parents shifted. Then he started studying in a Latin school and turned out to be a great mathematician. After that he followed astronomy and found his love for it. He also worked in the areas of astrology and optics.

NASA is Trying to Capture an Asteroid

NASA has always wanted to catch an asteroid but thought it was too expensive and therefore never tried. But now they found out that capturing an asteroid may not be as difficult or expensive as NASA had thought.

They are currently planning out a bold mission to snatch an asteroid and drag it to a stable orbit near Earth, where it could be visited repeatedly by astronauts for scientific purposes. 

The best way they think to do this is to chase down one of the "mini-moons" that go around our planet temporarily before going back off into deep space.

New Alien Planet

A nearby alien planet six times the size of the Earth is covered with a water-filled atmosphere that includes a strange plasma form of water. Astronomers have determined that the atmosphere of super-Earth Gliese 1214 b (which is the planet's name) is likely water-filled. 

However, this new planet is not like Earth meaning it can't allow human conditions. The high temperature and density of this planet gives it an atmosphere that is a lot different than Earth, so therefore no one can live there.

Although it is still a great discovery because it proves that water does exist outside our planet, it also proves that there may be aliens.

Ten New Black Holes

The recent news is that ten extremely large black holes have been found with the help of a super telescope. The super telescope is a black hole hunting telescope called NuSTAR (Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array). Although they discovered the black holes by accident, it is still a great discovery. The observatory is called the x-ray space observatory. It is an achievement because this discovery shows that there is so much of the galaxy that we do not know about.

Before the discovery there used to be mysterious sources of light which have now been identified as the light from one of the black holes. NASA uses a cosmic x-ray background so they can identify which thing is what in space. For example, a black hole's color in the cosmic x-ray background is purple. This discovery also proves that the bigger the galaxy, the more black holes.

This proves, as I said, that there are many other black holes and galaxies. It also proves that the universe is infinite, and it is continuously growing.